ANNALES · Ser. hist. sociol. · 29 · 2019 · 4
691
OCENE / RECENSIONI / REVIEWS, 689–699
OCENE
RECENSIONI
REVIEWS
Todor Kuljić:
PROGNANI POJMOVI – NEOLIBERALNA POJMOVNA 
REVIZIJA MISLI O DRUŠTVU. Beograd, Clio, 2018,
392 strani.
The subject of the most recent monography by T. 
Kuljić is the neoliberal conceptual revision of the social 
thought, which presents an applied conceptual history. 
The historical-sociological analysis of actual capitalism 
is here devoted to the criticism of its hegemonic social 
concepts (profitability, market, transition, management, 
social exclusion) and to the expulsion of the old con-
cepts (socialism, internationalism, humanism, material 
social justice, social revolution, exploitation). The new 
concepts of social justicejustify the interests of ruling 
groups directly or indirectly. By one should bringing 
order into numerous and often chaotic processes and 
events. Concepts summarize social contradictions, em-
phasize the key tensions and interests, and are grouped 
in discourses in order to get cognitive and effective pow-
er. The first two chapters of the book provide the ele-
ments of the theoretical and conceptual frame.
In the first chapter “The conceptual history – sources, 
theory and criticism”, author analyses the sources of the 
idea, theory and criticism of conceptual history. Special 
attention was given to its founder, the German historian 
R. Koselleck. His thesis that pluralist history should be 
written from the viewpoint which is also plural and his 
reflective historicism close to constructivism and relativ-
ism were given special consideration. Some of Koselleck 
is also presented, but despite it, the conceptual history 
as a scientific discipline encouraged a linguistic shift in 
historical research emphasized the importance of her-
meneutic research of meanings and it reduced, more or 
less reliably, the complexity of the past events by pro-
ductively summarizing the past on the whole.
The second chapter “Historical concepts: a connec-
tion of an analytical and creative aspect” shows why 
the key historical concepts are not just simple tools of 
knowledge but the factors of historical processes. These 
concepts are complex and variable combinations of 
analytical and normative efforts, and they become ef-
fective when connected within specific discourses. The 
book shows how semantics of the hegemonic concepts 
of any period testifies to what was imposed as desirable 
meaning of life. It reveals the way the complexity of by-
gone past and bygone future was reduced, as well as 
the historical concepts which were used as weapons of 
war and oppression or the ones which were levers of 
solidarity and peace. These concepts are both the pre-
requisites of the explanations in social sciences, and the 
means of emancipation. The necessary context for the 
assessment of their role is provided by the conceptual 
history, which must have its own reflexivity; any usage 
of historical concepts has its own epistemological limits 
and its own take on the concepts. In this context, the 
book pays special attention to modern helplessness of 
the concept of anti-capitalism. The author concludes 
is that the contemporary idea of a wishful future and a 
clear distinction between the good and the bad aspects 
of the past are important requirements for the control of 
the present situation in capitalism.
The third chapter “On justification of contemporary 
capitalism” attempts to show new patterns of justifica-
tion of capitalism in our century as a real frame of the 
postsocialist conceptual history. The political elites of 
the peripheral capitalism justify power by pointing to 
the entrance of the capital which moves away from the 
centre and towards the cheap labour force. The trade 
unions are powerless because the peripheral states give 
too much power to the capital coming from the centre. 
Thus the circle of exploitation closes with the migration 
of capital which has the power to blackmail and which 
deprives the trade unions and the labour force of power 
in the centre as well as on the periphery. The decisions 
are made by the supranational actors, the internation-
al funds and banks. In addition, today’s capitalism is 
justified by the growth of religiosity and by the digital 
control over information. With the growth of religiosity, 
ethnocentrism, xenophobia, the right parties are getting 
stronger. The left has been destroyed by the ethnona-

ANNALES · Ser. hist. sociol. · 29 · 2019 · 4
692
OCENE / RECENSIONI / REVIEWS, 689–699
tionalism and it is also encumbered by its own melo-
dramatic nostalgia as the paralysing memory culture, 
stresses Kuljić.
The fourth chapter is entitled “On human innate 
rights: the radical natural law and the social justice from 
K. Marx up to neoliberalism”. The natural law is a su-
praempirical law that does not owe its dignity to the le-
gal norm, but to the intrinsic qualities of a human being. 
This chapter presents a different hierarchical position of 
the natural law in the critique of capitalism by K. Marx 
to our days and its different accentuation as a suprapos-
itive framework of justice. The theoretical search for 
social justice in the philosophy of the natural law (K. 
Marx, M. Weber, G. Radbruch, L. Strauss, E. Bloch, Lj. 
Tadić) (1) is analytically separated from empirical iden-
tification of power relations that allowed or hindered 
social justice in practice (2). The book offers an analysis 
of historically different relationships between the posi-
tive and the radical natural law in both the compressed 
20
th
 century epochal conscience and today’s neoliberal 
one. In addition, it compares the role of the natural law 
in capitalism and socialism and deliberates differences 
between social justice from above and social justice 
from below. The first one is gratuitous, paternalistic and 
limited, while the second one is radical and has to be 
conquered. The radical natural law should express itself 
as a fully developed social justice liberated from capi-
talism. Criticism of social injustice from the viewpoint of 
natural law has no practical effects in our days, and in 
spite of it, it is not anachronistic.
The fifth chapter “Ljubomir Tadić’s ideological orien-
tation and political engagement – between harmony and 
tension”: and it deals with the vacillation of the Serbian 
philosopher Ljubomir Tadić’s orientation between revo-
lutionary Marxism and internationalism on the one hand 
and ethnocentrism and the defence of capitalism on the 
other hand. The most important line of Tadić’s thought 
is oriented towards material natural law. The place of 
this conceptual content is analysed in the (dis)continuity 
of Tadić’s orientation. Tadić’s thought stretched between 
these two poles on the edge between two centuries and 
two different epochal consciousnesses is also shown. 
The scope of explanation of the two non-identical 
phases of Tadić’s orientation with the different concepts 
of evolution, maturation and conversions is discussed. 
It is concluded that the strong conversion of Tadić’s 
practical engagement was accompanied by a slower 
and more moderate evolution of ideological orientation 
(from revolutionary to restrained Marxism). His partici-
pation in the foundation of the Democratic (bourgeois) 
party was not accompanied by a denial of Marxism. The 
paper also follows the evolution of the interpretation of 
Tadić’s thought. Tadić’s neglect of anti-capitalism was 
less criticized than his abandonment of anti-national-
ism. An overemphasized and often emphatic attitude 
towards Tadić’s practical engagement prevails; it dimin-
ishes the precision of the evaluation of (dis)continuity of 
the his orientation, as well as the cognitive value of his 
sociological and philosophical-legal thought, because 
of its reductionist orientation towards the resistance to  
the state power and civil disobedience.
In the sixth chapter “Altruism, philanthropy and hu-
manism: the conceptual-historical aspects of solidarity” 
discusses two main versions of altruism: philanthropy 
and humanism, their most developed historical forms 
and ways of legitimation. It is shown why private prop-
erty, market and profit maximization are not inconsistent 
with philanthropy and why they are not in accordance 
with humanism. The role of philanthropy in the apology 
justification of capitalism is considered. The paper com-
pares two classical writings: Marx-Engels’ Manifest of 
the Communist Party and Andrew Carnegie’s essay The 
Gospel of Wealth. In addition, it explores historical de-
velopment, main features and the limitations of solidarity 
both in humanism and in philanthropy in religious and 
in secular life, as well as the types of philanthropists and 
humanists and the contemporary philantrocapitalism in 
the USA and Germany. There are two kinds of philan-
thropy criticism: an extra-systemic one, which points to 
different abuses of philanthropists, but does not deny the 
foundations of the system (1), and a systemic one, which 
does not separate the criticism of philanthropy from the 
criticism of capitalism itself (2). Special attention is giv-
en to the usage of symbolic capital in the philanthropy 
and to different doubts about the sincerity of benefac-
tion. There is a difference between abstract humanism 
which only condemns inhumanity, on the one hand, 
and the theory of real humanism, as the lever by means 
of which one should abolish exploitation and oppres-
sion of human beings, on the other hand. It is possible 
to differentiate ideological explanations of charity, phil-
anthropic and humanistic attempts in the epochal con-
sciousness of different historical ages from the antiquity 
to neoliberalism. Humanism prevailed during the Cold 
War in socialism, whereas philanthropy has become 
hegemonic since the collapse of European socialism. 
Humanism was rooted in criticism of private property, 
while philanthropy serves to promote bourgeois values. 
The conclusion is that philanthropy relieves poverty on 
the level of distribution, while humanism tries to annihi-
late poverty on the level of production.
The seventh chapter is dedicated to “The concept 
of social revolution”. The original meaning of the oc-
cupied and banished concept of social revolution (1) 
and its contemporary misinterpretation, changing of the 
content and scope (2) are analysed here. Both political 
and internal scholarly corrections and social conditions 
of the revaluation of the concept of social revolution 
are shown. The last two chapters author discusses the 
changes of the concept of social justice.
The eighth chapter “The social justice in the 21
st
 
century” deals with the analysis of the limitations of 
neoliberal criticism of inequality, the pluralisation and 
relativization of justice, the political use of social justice 

ANNALES · Ser. hist. sociol. · 29 · 2019 · 4
693
OCENE / RECENSIONI / REVIEWS, 689–699
and the suppression of social justice in the capitalism 
of the 21
st
 century. The main values of social justice are 
deformed due to the weakness of the left. The liberal 
concepts of social exclusion and marginalisation are 
specifically analysed. The poverty seems quite different 
when analysed as an aspect of exclusion than as a re-
sult of exploitation. There are different discourses which 
summarize, evaluate and accentuate the social injustice 
in the opposite manner. The neoliberal concepts mys-
tify the real reasons of social injustice, relativizing and 
neutralizing the fact that the key inequality lies in the 
production relations.
In the ninth chapter “Farewell to social justice – on 
the narrow normative framework of neoliberal discourse 
about justice” attention is drawn to different neoliberal 
conceptual normalisations of market inequality. It was 
necessary to show that a different narrowing of a nor-
mative framework of neoliberal discourse about jus-
tice (J. Rawls, W. Kersting) is connected with different 
criticism of capitalism. Marx’s theory of labour value 
was stimulating when highlighting that capitalism re-
produces an unfair social structure because it is based 
on exploitation.
Finally, the author draws several conclusions. An im-
portant aspect of theoretical conflict over the changes 
in a society is the concepts grouped in discourses. His-
torical semantics studies the changes in the meaning of 
words, concepts and discourses which bear the mean-
ing of past societies consended in concepts and thus re-
constructs the forms of communication in the past. It is 
enough to say that the changes in the meaning of key 
concepts are indicators of the changes in a society. It 
should be added that the emergence of every new con-
cept is the result of new circumstances, but also a new 
way to perceive the old ones. In a consended form, it an-
swers the question of why something happened in a par-
ticular way and the way it should have happened. The 
concepts grouped into discourses analytically explore 
the problem, but also suggest the direction in which 
the society should be changed. The analytical and nor-
mative components of concepts and discourses make 
them the carriers of theory and ideology. In its diachron-
ic sense, conceptual history recognizes the moment of 
innovation, when the old concepts become obsolete, 
and the new ones are created. In a cognitive sense, a 
concept is a meaningful unity of logical operations; and 
in a political sense, new concepts are associated with 
social earthquakes when new forces invade a concep-
tual field and change not only the reality but also the 
perception of it. At turning points, the concepts become 
and influential and consended part of the ideologies of 
social groups either when creating a desired vision of 
society or when stigmatizing the enemy. The changes of 
several strategic conceptual controversies (material ver-
sus formal natural law, humanism versus philanthropy, 
material social justice versus postmaterial market jus-
tice, transeunt versus immanent social justice) are an-
alysed. Different neoliberal arguments of postmaterial 
social justice are here explained and criticised as the 
ideologization of social inequality and of actual global 
capitalism as well. The neoliberal hegemonic epochal 
consciousness is condensed in fighting terms which are 
considered as both innovations and occupations, stress-
es in the conclusion author T. Kuljić.
Avgust Lešnik
Darko Darovec:
VENDETTA IN KOPER 1686. Koper, Zgodovinsko
društvo za južno Primorsko, Annales Majora, 2018,
207 strani
From the very beginning, international relations—
as an activity and a field of science—have been subject 
to the fundamental question of how to resolve conflicts 
that arise between individuals, social groups, and sin-
ce the Westphalisation also states, in a peaceful way. 
Throughout history, two core reasons for doing so have 
been used—the first prevailed from antiquity to the late 
19
th
 century, which marks the start of the evolution of 
the second, which was formalised with the emergence 
of the League of Nations and the United Nations. Why 
two reasons and processes? Mainly because they build 
on two different approaches. Until the mid-19
th
 centu-
ry, the prevalent view was that peaceful conflict resolu-
tion makes sense because it pays off. Already the great 
Montesquieu wrote in The Spirit of the Laws that peace 
boosts international trade, and this in turn increases 
wellbeing. Peace and trade growth were (and still are) 
two sides of the same coin, and peaceful settlement of 
disputes until the 19
th
 century was above all pragma-
tic. A shift came with the democratisation of the inter-
national community, and its increasingly hierarchical 
nature and complexity. All these changes also led to a 
turn from pragmatic thinking to ideological thinking. 
From this point on, peaceful conflict resolution was 
an ideological issue, and was seen as a civilizational 
achievement or civilizational norm. This was also con-
firmed by both Hague Peace Conferences, the greatest 
achievement of which is of course the Convention for 
the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. The 
two world wars are proof of how little we learn from 
history. This is why the setting up of the United Nati-
ons after WWII was only an attempt at continuing what 
had already been established on the ideological stage 
by the Hague Conferences and the League of Nations. 
Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations, which 
lays down the means of pacific settlement of disputes, 
thus only reflects the progressive development of the 
ideology that it is a civilizational duty at our level of 
development to settle disputes in a peaceful manner 
rather than with guns and bayonets.